Decisions provokes anger

Federal drug regulators on Friday once again delayed making a decision on allowing over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill, saying they needed more time to gather public reaction to the plan and to figure out how they could enforce it.

The announcement infuriated Democrats and abortion rights advocates, who said the Food and Drug Administration allowed politics to trump science. Abortion opponents, however, said the application should be rejected.

Lester M. Crawford, the commissioner of food and drugs, said in a news conference that his agency had decided that the science supported giving over-the-counter access of the drug to women 17 and older, but that the agency could not figure out how to do that from regulatory and practical standpoints without younger teenagers’ obtaining the pills, too